>Does this Sanskrit book of 1940 provide any validity,
>authentication of 'Atma Bodha' being a work of Adi
>Sanskra.
>
No. It is assumed that Atmabodha is an authentic work of Adi Sankaracharya.
It was mainly the European and American textual scholars who began
discussing the genuineness or otherwise of texts in the Advaita tradition.
The upshot of this is that only the bhAshya-s are accepted as genuine,
along with the upadeshasAhasrI. No other prakaraNa grantha is authentic as
per this argument.
I personally think this debate has been framed in somewhat of a lopsided
fashion, based on a circular logic, and that authentic texts have come to
be rejected. I have written a fairly long paper revisiting this issue and
arguing that the text titled paJNchIkaraNa is genuine. This is in print
now, in the April 2002 issue of the journal Philosophy East and West. And
from what I can see, I think the Atmabodha also has a quite high
probability of being a genuine text.
Best regards,
Vidyasankar